A number of attempts have been made to provide ergonomically-designed keyboards, e.g. to reduce fatigue and injury and/or to increase operation speed. One example is described in U.S. patent application 07/683,980, filed Apr. 10, 1991 by Hargreaves, et al., now abandoned, commonly assigned herewith and incorporated herein by reference. In several ergonomic designs, at least some of the keys of the keyboard are positioned in a non-planar fashion. In at least one design, the keys are non-planar along at least two non-parallel axes, e.g., such as to provide a double-concave or bowl-shaped key array.
Although such ergonomic designs provide benefits to the user, it has been found relatively expensive to manufacture such keyboards in the past. At least part of the expense relates to non-planar, and particularly, double-concave configurations of a key array. Specifically, past designs have not provided for cost-effective electrical connection to the various key switches in the key array. Typically, previous ergonomic keyboards used individual wiring for connecting some or all of the keys in a non-planar key array. In one example of the individual wiring, individual wires are hand-soldered to each pin of each key switch and coupled at the opposite end to, e.g., a junction, for connection to a bus or cable. Such individual wiring is not only expensive to achieve, but time-consuming, prone to error, and not conducive to automation.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an ergonomic keyboard, e.g., having a double-concave key array which does not require individual wiring to the keys thereof.